Huángdì Sùwèn zhíjiě 黃帝素問直解
A Direct Exposition of the Yellow Emperor’s Basic Questions by 高士宗 (Gāo Shìzōng / 高世栻, 1637–1696, 清) — author
About the work
The Zhíjiě in nine juan is an early-Qīng line-by-line plain-language commentary on the Huángdì nèijīng Sùwèn written by Gāo Shìshì 高世栻 (zì Shìzōng 士宗 — hence the title-page convention 高士宗), a Qiántáng 錢塘 physician of the Kāngxī era and the most prominent disciple of 張志聰 Zhāng Zhìcōng of the Lǚshān jiǎngtáng 侶山講堂 academy (see KR3ea008). The work occupied Gāo for ten years and was completed in 1695. Its programmatic aim, set out in the preface, is to make the Sùwèn legible to physicians and Confucian scholars who find 王冰 Wáng Bīng’s commentary obscure and the Sùwèn itself remote from ordinary clinical concerns; Gāo therefore renders the original in straightforward exegetical paraphrase (直解) without scholastic apparatus.
Prefaces
The preface (KR3ea007_000.txt) is dated Kāngxī yǐhài zhī chūn 康熙乙亥之春 = spring 1695, signed Qiántáng Gāo Shìshì Shìzōng 錢塘高世栻士宗 at the Lǚshān jiǎngtáng 侶山講堂. Gāo opens by citing 孔安國 Kǒng Ānguó’s preface to the Shàngshū, which classes the writings of Fúxī, Shénnóng, and Huángdì as the Sānfén 三墳 “all speaking of the Dào”, and he reads the Sùwèn as the Yellow Emperor’s elucidation of the tiānrén héyī 天人合一 (heaven-and-man as one) doctrine through yīnyáng physiology. He laments that after a thousand years the Sùwèn remains unintelligible to physicians and Confucians alike, that “techniques” (方技) flourish while the Nèijīng falters, and that without grounding in the Nèijīng Chinese medicine will collapse — a polemical posture characteristic of the 侶山 school. The preface is followed by a nine-point 凡例 setting out his methodological commitments.
Abstract
Gāo Shìshì studied medicine under Zhāng Zhìcōng at the Lǚshān jiǎngtáng (the 侶山堂 academy on the shores of West Lake), and his commentary is in many places explicitly derived from Zhāng’s Sùwèn jí zhù (KR3ea008); he sometimes differs from Zhāng in detail and writes more accessibly. His main divergences from the received Wáng Bīng line are: (i) a strict commitment to the 81-篇 structure with no rearrangement; (ii) an attempt to read every chapter primarily through the wǔyùn liùqì 五運六氣 doctrine even outside the seven great treatises, which gives the work an idiosyncratic systematic unity; (iii) a distinctive treatment of pulse diagnostics modeled on Zhāng Zhìcōng’s Mài jué chànwēi 脈訣闡微 thinking. Gāo’s other major medical works are the Yīxué zhēnchuán 醫學真傳 (1699, posthumously printed by his pupils) and contributions to the Zhāng-school Língshū jí zhù (KR3ea025). He died in 1696, one year after the Zhíjiě was completed.
Translations and research
No substantial Western-language scholarship located. In Chinese-medicine education the Zhíjiě is the standard introductory commentary on the Sùwèn; reprinted in Zhōngyī jīngdiǎn cídiǎng zhù (Renmin Weisheng, several editions from 1980).